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Saturday, April 21, 2012

HOW TO CLEAN UP A GUITAR / BASS (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about how to take care of the cleaning of a guitar or a bass!
We must start by lowering the strings tuning until they are completely loose, so we can cut them without risking to have a whiplash on our face (which is painful), then we can cut them with a pair of cutters at the height of the pickups and remove them. Especially for bass, you can save the strings instead of cutting them, since bass strings are more expensive, so just unwind and remove them: you never know if some day they could come in handy.

Now it's time to move to frets polish, we can use a silver specific product (like fine steel wool), or the Planet Wavesfret polish, which is even more specific. With the P.W. fret polish, you also have a "mask" to apply to your fretboard that has holes for the single frets, so you can rub the grit side of the sheet on the frets until they are clean like they're brand new :)
If you don't have the Planet Waves template, you can just apply some paper-duct tape on the fingerboard, to avoid ruining it while cleaning the frets.

Moving on to the cleaning of the fingerboard, it's time to use the Lemon Oil, which is a particular kind of oil suggested for guitar and bass, and it's produced by many brands, for example by Dunlop. Just apply it on the fingerboard, and then wipe it off rubbing hard with some paper.
If you have a maple fingerboard, SKIP this step, since it is not required, and may even leave some stain!

Finally, for all the painted parts of the instrument, we should use some drop of a simple liquid neutral detergent with some paper, and after we have applied it, we must make sure of wiping it off completely.